The Lieutenants' Online Love Read online

  What happens when your internet crush...

  Shows up in real life?

  First Lieutenant Thane Carter has experienced great success as the senior platoon leader of a military police company at Fort Hood. But tbh, his love life stinks. Thane wishes his maddening—and off-limits—new coworker, Lieutenant Chloe Michaels, could be more like his online friend “BallerinaBaby.” It’s complicated, all right—especially when Thane learns that his workplace nemesis and his internet crush are one and the same!

  Chloe Michaels on the pros and cons of internet romance:

  Advantages of a virtual boyfriend:

  1. They always listen when you talk.

  2. They don’t judge you.

  3. Sweatpants and bad hair? Don’t care.

  4. You can’t ever really get hurt.

  Disadvantages of a virtual boyfriend:

  1. They can’t keep you warm at night.

  The more time I spend with Lieutenant Thane Carter, the more I appreciate my online friend, DifferentDrummer. Thane thinks he knows everything, and he drives me crazy. DifferentDrummer really “gets” me. There’s only one problem: he’s not here...

  Or is he?

  * * *

  AMERICAN HEROES: They’re coming home—and finding love!

  Dear Reader,

  “Are your books autobiographical?” I usually answer this question by saying bits and pieces of my real life make it into each book, and that’s absolutely true. The Texas Rescue series takes place in Austin, for example, which is where I met and dated my husband. The Doctors MacDowell series drew on situations I experienced during the years I spent in hospitals and doctors’ offices in my previous career in the medical industry.

  But this book?

  Like the heroine of this book, I graduated from West Point, I was stationed in Texas and I was an army officer in the Military Police Corps, where I pulled thirty-six-hour shifts like she does. Is this book autobiographical? Honestly, the answer is still no. I married a civilian Texan, for starters!

  Lieutenant Chloe Michaels is not me, but is she somebody real? Yes. She is everybody real who I knew at West Point and in the US Army. She is a mosaic, a million bits and pieces of different people and personalities and experiences from which I drew a new character, a woman who I think deserves a happily-ever-after kind of love. I hope you will think so, too, when you finish the last page and close the book.

  I’d love to hear what you think. You can email me through my website at www.carocarson.com, or post a comment on Facebook. I’m at www.Facebook.com/authorcarocarson.

  Cheers,

  Caro Carson

  The Lieutenants’ Online Love

  Caro Carson

  Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, Caro Carson has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award–winning Harlequin author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

  Books by Caro Carson

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Texas Rescue

  How to Train a Cowboy

  A Cowboy’s Wish Upon a Star

  Her Texas Rescue Doctor

  Following Doctor’s Orders

  A Texas Rescue Christmas

  Not Just a Cowboy

  Montana Mavericks: What Happened at the Wedding?

  The Maverick’s Holiday Masquerade

  The Doctors MacDowell

  The Bachelor Doctor’s Bride

  The Doctor’s Former Fiancée

  Doctor, Soldier, Daddy

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

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  This book is dedicated to the women of West Point,

  the ones who came before me, especially the Class of ’80, who first proved we belonged,

  the ones who lived it with me, especially Chriss, who dragged me off post to have fun in Alabama, Texas and Panama, and Gill, who can make me laugh even while we’re doing push-ups in a sawdust pit at Airborne School,

  and the ones who continue the Long Gray Line after me, especially 1LT Bethany Leadbetter, who so patiently answered this Old Grad’s questions about today’s service—and who is proof that the US Army has the country’s best and brightest in its ranks.

  Beat Navy.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Excerpt from Reunited with the Sheriff by Lynne Marshall

  Chapter One

  Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

  Chloe stared at her blinking cursor, her finger hovering over the enter key on her laptop. One second, not even that, was all it would take for that sentence to be sent to him, no way to take it back. Would he think she was dumb or would he think she was funny?

  It shouldn’t matter. The man was no more than a series of words on a screen, a modern-day pen pal. She wrote to him with BallerinaBaby as her user name. He wrote back as DifferentDrummer. A freebie conversation app had matched them up months ago and they’d been writing back and forth ever since, but Chloe knew that wasn’t the same as being real friends in real life.

  It shouldn’t matter, but it did. She wanted to make him laugh. Something about his notes lately made her think her anonymous correspondent had been having a hard week. He had talked to her through all the crazy months she’d been bouncing from one place to another. He’d listened to all her thoughts and worries and hopes. It was the least she could do to help him out if he was tired and overworked. Friends and lovers ought to take care of each other. Chloe believed emotional support was just as important as physical compatibility in a relationship, so—

  Chloe snatched her finger away from the enter key. She was looking at nothing more than the basic white screen of an outdated app, yet she was worrying about emotional parity in a relationship. She needed to keep the proper perspective on this...this...whatever it was.

  What should she call it when her digital pen pal felt like a better friend than the living human beings around her? Borderline insanity?

  She didn’t know any of the human beings around her, that was the problem. She didn’t know anyone in the entire state of Texas. She was newly arrived in a new town for a new job. All her stuff was still in boxes. The only constant was her pen pal. She didn’t want him to think she was dumb, because if she lost him, too...well, she’d lose the most reliable presence in her life for these last five months.

  Her cursor was still blinking. Tots.

  Tater tots. Was that what she was going to talk about? She was going to talk about tots when what she was honestly feeling was lonely?

  “Roger that,” she said out loud, and hit Enter.

  The alarm on her wristwatch went off. Time to get ready for work.

  Chloe carried her laptop with her and set it by her bathroom sink so she could keep an eye on the
screen. If Different Drummer was online, he would answer immediately. It was one of the things she loved about him. She smoothed her hair back and twisted it into the low, tight bun that she was required to wear every day.

  Her cursor blinked in silence.

  Tots!

  Men didn’t really joke about food cravings, at least not the men in her world, and there were plenty of men in her world. They talked about women, especially their breasts, and they talked about drinking, especially beer, but they didn’t joke about food cravings.

  The cursor kept blinking.

  Food cravings. What had she been thinking?

  She’d probably, finally scared off Different Drummer. There were so many jokes about women and food cravings, he might think she was confessing some kind of hormonal thing, a craving like pregnant women were supposed to get. Worse, maybe he thought it was a monthly craving. Guys were so squeamish about things like that. A definite turnoff.

  She hadn’t been trying to turn him off. She hadn’t been trying to turn him on, either. It wasn’t like anyone could seduce a man with a line about tater tots.

  She jabbed a few extra bobby pins into her bun. Seduce him. Ha. She didn’t even know what he looked like. The simple little app didn’t have the capacity to send photos. She scowled at her reflection in the mirror. With her hair pulled back tightly, her face devoid of any makeup—she’d just sweat it off at work, anyway—she didn’t look like any kind of seductress.

  She pulled a sports bra over her bun carefully, then wrestled the rest of the way into it. Good thing she was flexible. It was the kind of bra that didn’t let anything show, even when she was soaked in sweat, the kind of bra that kept a girl as flat as possible, because bouncy curves were frowned on in her profession.

  She pulled on her comfy, baggy pants and zipped up her matching jacket, checking her laptop’s screen between each article of clothing.

  He had to be offline. If he was online, he would have answered her...unless he was turned off by a ballerina who was obsessed with tater tots. Which she wasn’t.

  She yanked on her best broken-in boots. If there was anything she needed to stop obsessing over, it was him, the mystery man who always seemed to get her sense of humor, who always seemed as happy to chat with her all night as she was to chat with him. It was too easy to forget it was all an illusion. She wasn’t really Ballerina Baby; he wasn’t really a unique man who marched to the beat of a Different Drummer, a mystery man who sent her long notes and found himself hopelessly charmed by her words.

  Was he?

  Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

  Blink, blink.

  Nope. He wasn’t hopelessly charmed. It was time for Ballerina Baby to join the real world.

  Her fingertips had just touched the laptop screen, ready to close it before leaving her new apartment, when a sentence in blue magically appeared.

  You crack me up.

  He got it. She’d made him laugh. Mission accomplished.

  The next blue sentence appeared: Or am I not supposed to laugh? The word desperate sounds rather...

  Desperate? she typed one-handed. Then she stuffed her wallet in her pocket, but not her car keys. She knew from experience that if she started chatting to Different Drummer, she’d lose track of time and forget that she had to be somewhere. She bit down on the metal ring of her key fob, holding it in her teeth to leave two hands free for typing. She wouldn’t forget about work as long as she had her car keys in her teeth.

  Another blue line appeared on-screen. They say most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

  Chloe raised one eyebrow. They slipped in famous quotes now and then, just to see if the other person would identify the quote, their own little nerdy game. This one was no challenge. How very Thoreau of you. (Too easy.)

  He replied, You, however, are not like most men. (I knew it was easy.)

  For starters, I’m a woman. Her words showed up in hot pink as she typed—the app’s choice for female users, not hers.

  He sent her a laughing-face emoji. I was thinking more along the lines that you don’t seem to lead a quiet life. You also never sound desperate. I don’t think you’d be quiet about it if you were.

  She was typing while holding car keys in her teeth. Quietly desperate? He didn’t know the half of it.

  Were you able to procure the tots? Tell me you did it noisily.

  Shamelessly. I bought a big bag of frozen tots at the grocery store a couple of hours ago. They didn’t survive long.

  You killed them already? All of them?

  All of them. A one-pound bag.

  Blink, blink.

  For a moment, just one tiny, insecure moment, she worried again that she’d turned him off. Ballerina Baby didn’t sound like the kind of woman who would eat a whole bag of tater tots at one sitting, did she? The next second, impatient with all these self-doubts, she sucked in a faintly metallic breath around her key ring and shoved aside all the insecurity. This was her friend—yes, her friend—and sometimes a pause was just a pause.

  I’ve shocked you into silence with my brutal killing of a bag of tots, haven’t I?

  Not at all. I’m deciding how best to advise you so that you won’t be tried for murder. I don’t think they’d let you write to me from jail. I’d miss you.

  Chloe’s fingers fell silent. He’d miss her, and he wasn’t afraid to say it. He was so different from all the other men she knew. So much better. Would he find it weird if she suddenly switched gears and wrote that?

  Instead, she wrote: If I hadn’t killed them all, they would have sat in my freezer, taunting me, testing my willpower. No, they needed to die. ’twere best to be done quickly.

  Very Lady Macbeth of you. (Too easy.)

  Yes, well, unlike Lady McB, I ate all the evidence. I guess I shouldn’t feel too superior. In order to eat her evidence, she would have had to eat the king’s guards. Rather filling, I’d imagine.

  He had a quick comeback. If Macbeth had been about cannibalism, English class would have been much more interesting.

  Ha. She smiled around the car keys in her mouth. At any rate, ’tis done. Half with mustard, half with ketchup, all with salt.

  Then you’re safe. We can keep talking. How was the rest of your day?

  If only the last guy she’d seriously dated had been so open about saying he liked her. If only any guy she’d ever dated had been like Different Drummer.

  But the car keys in her teeth did their job. They were getting heavy; she had to go.

  I wish I could stay and chat, but I gotta run. And then, just in case he thought she was an unhealthy glutton, she added, Time to go burn off a whole bagful of tater calories. Talk to you tomorrow.

  There. That didn’t sound desperate or obsessed or...in love. She couldn’t fall in love with a man she’d never met.

  Looking forward to it, Baby.

  But if they broke their unwritten rule and arranged to meet in real life...

  The alarm on her wristwatch sounded again.

  If they met in real life, he’d find out she was no ballerina—not that she’d ever said she was, but she’d never made it clear she wasn’t. She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who was any guy’s baby. Most guys were a little intimidated by her, something it had taken her a few years to realize.

  But with him? She could show so many more sides of herself. The soft side, the insecure side, the side that worried about making friends, and yes, the side that adored the ballet. A lot of pop psychology criticized the digital age for enabling everyone to pretend to be someone they were not while they were online, but Chloe felt like this situation was the opposite. The anonymity let her be her whole self with Drummer, not only her work self. She’d be crazy to mess with a good thing. She’d follow the rules, and not try to figure out who he really was.

  She picked up the last item she always wore for work, her patrol cap. The way she slid the camouflage cap over her hair, the way she pulled the brim down just so, were second nature to her. The cap
was well broken-in; she’d been wearing this exact one throughout her four years as a cadet at West Point, the United States Military Academy.

  Although she was so familiar with her uniform that she could dress in the dark in a matter of seconds when required, Chloe checked the mirror to be sure her uniform would pass inspection, as she’d been trained to do. The American flag on her shoulder and the name Michaels embroidered over her pocket were the same as they’d been since she’d first raised her right hand as a new cadet at the military academy and sworn to defend the Constitution.

  The embroidered gold bar on the front of her hat was new. She’d graduated in May, so now she owed the US Army five years of service in return for her bachelor’s degree. She was going to serve those years in her first choice of branch, the Military Police Corps. She was a second lieutenant now, the lowest rank of commissioned officers, but she was a commissioned officer with all the responsibility and authority that entailed. After four years of West Point in New York, three weeks of Airborne School in Georgia and four months of military police training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, she was ready to lead her first platoon of MP soldiers here in Texas. So ready.

  Tonight, she’d be riding along in a patrol car with the officer on duty, the first of a few mandatory nights familiarizing herself with the post she’d call home for the next three or four years. Once she knew her way around the streets of Fort Hood, she’d take shifts as the officer on duty herself, the highest-ranking MP during the midnight hours, the one who had to make the final decisions—and the one who had to accept the blame if anything went wrong.

  First impressions were important. After West Point, Air Assault School, Airborne School and Military Police Basic Officer Leadership Course, Chloe knew exactly what was expected of her. She looked at the officer in the mirror and wiped the smile from her face. She could be Ballerina Baby tomorrow, cozying up to her Different Drummer and being as soft and girly as she liked.

  In private.

  Tonight, it was time for Second Lieutenant Chloe Michaels to go be a badass.